He gestured to the empty log next to me with a gentlemanly flourish of his hands.
I nodded, and scooted up to make room. “You see, even that’s American,” I complained. “An English guy would’ve just grunted and sat on the log.”
“I’m Kyle,” he said, ignoring me. He offered out his hand.
“I know, Russ told me,” I replied. “And that is the most American name I’ve heard today.” But I shook his hand because he was the sort of good-looking that you take any opportunity to touch. “I’m Amber. I’m sorry if I’m being mean. I think I’m a bit wankered.”
Kyle screwed his face up. “What’s wankered?”
“Oh, bollocks.” I waved my hand in the air as I tried to explain it. “It means, like, pissed. Hang on, you wouldn’t get that word either. It means ‘drunk’. Do you guys say drunk?” I gestured more and almost poked his eye. “Bollocks, I’m sorry. Did I get you?”
Kyle caught my dangerous hand, and held it a bit longer than necessary which might’ve been an American thing. I dunno. He laughed. “Well, Amber, I’m afraid that you are the most English person I’ve ever met. So touché! I guess we’re equal.”
I snorted. Always attractive, that. “Me? English?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Think back on the sentence you just said.”
I did… I’d used the words: wankered, pissed and bollocks. In fact, I’d used bollocks twice.
“… And look at your English skin, and English hair, and cool English fashion, and your English freckles.” I touched my hair self-consciously, not sure how I felt about all the things he’d noticed about my appearance. Cool English fashion? I was only wearing my kimono, gladiator sandals and denim shorts. It was hardly a statement. “You may be the only English person here, but you’re really flying the flag for back home. Trust me.”
I looked back at him. “Fair enough.” We both laughed.
People had started dancing next to the water, and Melody dragged off Watersports, leaving me and Kyle alone on our log. I caught Kyle looking at Melody’s legs as she strode past us, and felt that pang you feel when another girl looks better than you – even though I know thinking like that’s totally toxic.
“So this is camp?” I threw my hands up to the night-time activities on the beach, the glow of the fire, the reflection of the moon off the hardly-there ripples of the lake…and to the mosquito-bite already on my leg.
“It’s pretty darn American, isn’t it?” Kyle said.
“Why do Americans hate their children so much that they ship them off into the mountains all summer?”
Kyle grinned, taking a sip of his beer and looking at me sideways as he did.
“Don’t you British people just hire nannies to look after your children?”
I shook my head. “Only in Mary Poppins. Or in the aristocracy.”
“Well, I guess it’s sort of the same here. Well, this camp, anyway. It’s a private one. There’s no way my parents could afford to send my younger brother and sisters here. We just went to day camp down the road from our house.”
I held my hand up. “Wait. It costs money to send your children here?”
Kyle nodded. “Hell yeah. Thousands of dollars. And I’m telling you, that money does not go much on our wages.”
I shook my head, tutting. It made my brain start a tsunami of beer haze from one side to the other. “Unbelievable. They’re unbelievable.”
“What is it?”
“Just my mum and Kevin…they’re such…” I trailed off and finished the last of my beer instead of my sentence. Such what? Phonies, I guess? Hypocrites? She and Bumface Kevin never told me this camp was a business. I’d assumed it was, like, a charity thing. When Kevin bought it, she emailed implying as much. I thought it was for disadvantaged kids or whoever, especially as he’d been a supervisor at Mum’s rehab place. He and Mum acted like they were serving the community or something, not taking thousands of dollars so Donald-dearest could learn how to waterski ready for his summers on the French Riviera…or whatever it is rich people do. But then I remembered overhearing Dad and Penny whispering one night in the kitchen, talking about how Kevin had been forbidden from working at centres after they found out about him and Mum getting together, so maybe charity gigs were a complete no-go now.
I changed the subject to curb my anger. “So, you’re the eldest?” I asked. I don’t know if it was the beer, or what, but Kyle was very good-looking.
“Yep. Of four. My family all live in this podunk town in the California mountains.”
I made a face. “What’s podunk?”
He laughed. “Do you not have that word in England? It means small, I guess, like ‘going-nowhere’.”
“Podunk,” I repeated it to myself. “Do you still live there?”
“Not really.” Maybe he looked sad? I couldn’t tell. Tans make faces look happier. “I’m at college at Brown,” he said.
I blinked at him.
“It’s a college. On the other side of America.”
“Oh, okay.” A hazy memory pinged into my fuzzy brain. “Hang on. I’ve heard of Brown. Isn’t it one of those colleges where all the rich people go?”
He laughed. Again. I seemed to make Americans laugh a lot. “It’s Ivy League, I guess. Yeah.”
“So your town can’t be too poo-dank if you’re attending an Ivy League school?”
Kyle scratched his neck and didn’t correct me. “I got a scholarship.”
“A football one or something? Like Forrest Gump?”
More laughter. “No, just a regular smart one.”
I sat back on the log and wobbled. “Wow. You must be REALLY smart.” I pointed at him again. And almost took his eye out again.
He shrugged, all modest. “They offer one in my old high school per year group. It’s, like, the only way to get out of my poo-dank town.” He smiled, his teeth reflecting all the moonlight. “So I studied really hard…” He paused, took another sip of beer. “That said, I am on Brown’s college basketball team.”
I snorted. “Basketball team? Who even plays basketball? What are you, the captain or something?”
He nodded, grinned uncomfortably. “You got it.”
I pushed his arm playfully because beer had made me brave.
“You really are, categorically, the most American guy in the universe,” I said. “Next you’ll be telling me you were Prom King. And you drive a red pick-up truck.”
He pushed my arm back. “Prom King and Homecoming King. And my jeep is parked in the camp parking lot.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah right…” I started. Then I looked at him. He wasn’t laughing. “… Wait, you’re not kidding?” I dropped my mouth open, so much I probably ate double my daily protein recommendation in bugs. “You were a Prom King? I’m sitting next to an all American actual real-life Prom King.”
He shrugged, like it was nothing. NOTHING. But hello!?! Prom King?! All my life I’ve been watching movies about Prom Kings. I never thought they were real, and not Zac Efron.
For some reason, I stood up, swaying a little. This information bothered me but I was full of too many conflicting emotions and digesting too many new experiences to understand why. Suddenly I felt lost and homesick. And really bloody sad.
“Where you going?” he asked.
I swayed and adjusted my feet so I didn’t fall over.
“It was lovely meeting you.” I could hear myself slurring my words. “But I’m going to go to bed now. I’m scared that if I stay sitting next to you much longer, I may start sweating out apple pie and guns.”
He looked confused. “What?”
Just as I was trying to explain what I meant, even though I didn’t really know myself, Russ and Whinnie walked up. The volleyball game had finished.
“Hey, what’s up?” Russ asked. His olive skin was all shiny with sweat.
Kyle gestured to me. “Amber’s wigging out about being in America.”